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THE STATE OF THE VISUAL ARTS IN HONG KONG A continuing dialogue

Starting March 2002


Introduction

This project aims to provide a continuing dialogue for people to discuss the state of the visual arts in Hong Kong. We were extremely fortunate to be able to host the visit of John Russell Taylor to Hong Kong in December 2001 from which this project arose. John contributed two short chapters to this electronic book, which remains open for others to make additions. Ying Yeung Li contributed the lovely cover design, for which we are most grateful. We look forward to receiving more thought-provoking essays.

Christine Loh Chief Executive Officer April 2002


A Question of Identity John Russell Taylor

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ho are the Hong Kong artists, and who do they think they are? Do they, in fact, have any notion of their own identity? For the outsider, coming to Hong Kong again at the end of 2001, the key to these puzzles would probably seem to lie somewhere in the 1997 handover. After all, it must presumably have made some difference to the way Hong Kong artists perceive themselves and their situation. Must it not? Surely Hong Kong artists must have seen themselves in one way when Hong Kong was part of the British colonial empire, and somehow differently when it became instead part, albeit it rather special part, of the mainland Chinese nation. To find out, one must start with the situation of Hong Kong artists before 1997. At least before 1997 there was no doubt in anyone's mind about the separate identity of Hong Kong itself; only a doubt, and then a certainty, that it would not last for ever. Local cultural manifestations were, clearly, at least as far as visiting outsiders saw them, the product of Hong Kong's unique position, poised psychologically between West and East, Britain and China. While mainland China had been undergoing the rigours and repressions of the Cultural Revolution, Chinese artists in Hong Kong remained open to what was going on artistically in the outside world, and were free to use it or not, as they personally saw fit. They were able to travel, and to study abroad, which many of them did, in Britain, America, even Australia, or anywhere else in that English-speaking world which the Crown Colony unmistakably belonged to. Freedom to look outwards for inspiration did not mean, of course, that everyone did so. There were still many artists who stayed at home, were trained in the traditional ways of Chinese painting, and served primarily a local audience, along with some tourists who wanted the feel of China without actually venturing to the mainland. With this latter segment of the potential art market "local colour" was an advantage, though it did not necessarily have to be a specific Hong Kong local colour: just vaguely Chinese would do. Hong Kong local colour in art was largely confined to the sort of garish postcard-inoils, involving a lot of junks in the sunset, which was mass-produced for tourist shops in the alleys of Kowloon. There were, admittedly, expert watercolourists who produced agreeable paintings of Hong Kong views: the style was western, as the artists might well be, and the market for their works was primarily western too, found especially among the longer-term expat community, whose liking for such art reflected, more than anything, a sort of displaced nostalgia. It was notable that when an artist of stature came to work in Hong Kong, as Bill Jacklin, New York-based British artist, did in 1994, his subjects, with few exceptions, were recognisably Hong Kong, but eschewed the picturesque in favour of a fantasmagoric vision of the place as a modern city of highrises and flyovers, or of a harbour bathed in haze such as Turner or Monet might have delighted to paint. These works seemed to appeal to Hong Kong buyers, but possibly as much because of the snob appeal of an internationally recognised name attached as because of the inherent interest of the paintings themselves.

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This raises the question, important if we are considering the identity of those Hong Kong artists who belonged to the broad stream of world art rather than the narrower stream of traditionally Chinese art at this time, of who and what the Hong Kong art buyers were. The answer is that if Hong Kong "old money" was interested in art at all, the art would most probably be Chinese and antique. (This was as much true of long-established expatriates as of the grander kind of Hong Kong Chinese family.) There was a sufficiency of galleries and auctions to supply a lot of this particular demand locally, but also such buyers could afford to buy at London or New York auctions, or to dispatch their own agents to mainland China. Those who bought contemporary art in Hong Kong were a rather different breed, and probably of a different generation. They were most likely to be self-made professional Chinese men and women, lawyers and doctors and such, most of whom would have been born in Hong Kong but educated and trained abroad. A handful from the international diplomatic community might share such tastes, but very few of the colonial civil servants or shorter-term expatriate businessmen, who generally proved to have brought with them the philistine attitudes common in their class back home. All of this clearly had its effect on the contemporary artist functioning (or trying to function) in Hong Kong. Few if any artists can contrive, or afford, to work in a vacuum, completely outside the normal structures of supply and demand, accessability and affordability. Though there is evidence that one or two of these new patrons of the arts felt a particular interest, if not duty, to acquaint themselves with what local artists were doing, on the whole their existence impinged very little upon the Hong Kong market for the work of Hong Kong contemporary artists. Nor does it seem that features identifying one as a Hong Kong artist - a Chinese surname with a European christian name, for instance - was an advantage, and very possibly for Hong Kong buyers quite the reverse. That is bound to have influenced the way that Hong Kong artists saw themselves. Being a Hong Kong-born artist working in an internationally sanctioned contemporary style held few advantages and some clear disadvantages. So why should such artists identify themselves with Hong Kong? Living in Hong Kong and trying to be a fulltime professional artist there was a practical handicap, something to be put up with unless one wished to emigrate. So, in the years immediately before 1997, few local artists identified themselves as such, and relatively few identified with one another, referring back to the notion that they might all, in some sense, be in the same boat. And would one expect that this state of things would change radically after the death of the colony and the return of Hong Kong to China? Difficult to say in advance. But various possibilities were clearly present. For example, it is unlikely that many Hong Kong Chinese artists, whatever the colour of their passport, thought of themselves as essentially British, or part of some British art scene. One of the artists I spoke to remarked, quite matter-of-factly, that it was curious, though she did not even have a western name, that she had always lived and learned in streets with indelibly

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colonial British names. There seems in fact to have been very little resentment towards British rule per se, but virtually no identification with it. On the other hand, it would seem quite possible that there might at some level be a sense of identification with the mainland Chinese. Especially as, on the art scene at least, there had been spectacular changes in the previous twenty years. In the early 1980s China seemed really out of the picture artistically: even when China first decided to participate in the Venice Biennale, the result was a pavilion full of kitsch pictures of fruit blossom, without even the excuse that it was Post-Modern, ironic or somehow subversive. If Hong Kong Chinese artists felt very separate from what was going on just over the border, they had every right to do so. But then things changed radically. Suddenly mainland Chinese artists were flavour of the month internationally, and, as a result no doubt of the general cultural opening-up that was going on in China, the new young artists who figured most prominently in this movement people like Fang Lijun, Liu Wei, Wang Ziwei, Zhang Xiaogang or Xia Xiaowan - were doing definitely modern things in a variety of unmistakably modern manners. This meant that at least there was something in mainland Chinese art to react to, whether favourably or unfavourably. There was still a slight problem. Like other cultures long practically isolated from outside knowledge and therefore possibly influence (Russian culture before Gorbachov immediately springs to mind), the first reactions in mainland China to the new openness were a trifle naive, the response of a child let loose in a sweet-shop. It was understandable, in that changes and developments which had gradually happened over some fifty years in Europe and America all came at once in an avalanche of confusing and contradictory indications. Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, Op Art and Post-Modernism, Photorealism and Kitsch Art were all mixed up together, and it was hardly surprising that Chinese artists suddenly subjected to this cornucopia of exciting new styles tended to pick and mix and imitate rather than (or at least before) absorbing. But this state of affairs was unlikely to last very long. Bearing in mind the speed with which Chinese skills in classical Western music went from zero immediately after the Cultural Revolution to a plethora of international performance prizes in less than ten years, it was only to be expected that developments in Chinese visual art skills should be equally speedy. So, in fact, it proved. Partly from inherent quality in the work of the leading figures, who developed recognisable styles of their own with remarkable rapidity, and partly from clever marketing (much of it organized, ironically, by Hong Kong dealers), new mainland Chinese art was very soon making its mark on the international art market, especially in New York and London. Was this, perhaps, a band wagon Hong Kong artists could climb on to? Especially if it was taken together with a similar international advance in the status of such Taiwan artists as the sculptor Ju Ming. Clearly there was some advantage to be gained from being identified, in the broadest possible way, with "Chinese Art".

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But if the advantage was there, it does not seem to have been taken, or at least not very seriously or extensively. I know of a couple of artists who dropped their English forenames to become, nominally at least, obviously and unarguably Chinese. But that does not seem to have brought about any noticeable change in the way they went about selling themselves, either at home in Hong Kong or abroad. And as far as the notional Hong Kong market was concerned, it seems to not to have made, and not to have been particularly intended to make, the slightest difference. In fact, while many of the problems of Hong Kong artists who work in some kind of vaguely contemporary mode may well come from a degree of vagueness in their sense of their own identity, they often arise more from a failure in external organization. Of course the two cannot be completely separated, since if there is no sense of intellectual and aesthetic community (We are, after all, all Hong Kong artists) then why should the people involved not try to get together and organize some sort of combined operation? No apparent reason. But there seems to have been very little attempt to do so. It is largely a matter of mind-set, symptomatic perhaps of a subtle sort of pessimism, if not exactly despair: a feeling that the Hong Kong contemporary artist cannot really exist as a self-sufficient entity.

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A Question of Organization John Russell Taylor

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t sometimes seems that contemporary artists in Hong Kong have a sort of (professional) death wish. What they could possibly do to help themselves, on the whole they do not do. Nor are they helped by the structure of art-dealing in Hong Kong, and the limitations of the home market. To begin with, even the most enthusiastic dealers for contemporary Hong Kong art, such as Sandra Walter, John Batten and Johnson Chang of Han Art, cannot afford to run a business entirely on selling Hong Kong art, so inevitably in all such galleries, local art has always come all mixed up with art from abroad, whether the Philippines, Italy or mainland China. This is probably in some ways not a bad thing, since at least it implies some sort of level playing-field, if not exactly parity of esteem. But on the other hand, since homegrown art seems to have little or no particular appeal for Hong Kong collectors, the situation may well add to the confusion. And of course, by an ironic twist of fate, the Hong Kong artists in any specific dealer's stable are very likely less well known than their foreign competition - which is important in such a name-conscious environment. There is one possible advantage to the situation, however. If the gallery deals in foreign contemporaries, it most probably deals with the galleries these artists normally work with in their own countries. Which could mean that there is a certain reciprocity between galleries in Hong Kong and abroad. Which may mean that if a Hong Kong gallery puts on a show of an Italian artist, there is somewhere an Italian gallery which would be aware of a Hong Kong artist and be ready to give him or her a show. But the willingness is all. In the same way that a Hong Kong gallery would show an artist from anywhere only if it thought the artist concerned was possibly saleable in Hong Kong, so a gallery in Milan or Manilla would show a Hong Kong artist only if the show seemed like a viable commercial proposition, at least in the long term. And that is very seldom the case: certainly not as often as it might, and possibly should, be. The situation is in many ways a vicious circle: because the Hong Kong artists are not shown abroad, they are not known abroad, and if they are not known abroad it is highly unlikely that they will be shown there. Also, this rebounds noticeably on their position at home in Hong Kong, as the snobbish element in Hong Kong collecting means that patrons are disproportionately affected by foreign fame or the lack of it. Failing a breakthrough abroad, what is then to be done at home? It is easy enough to say that an exercise in consciousness raising is needed, but much more difficult to say how that is to be brought about. Obviously more galleries more interested in homegrown modern artists would help, but it seems to me that the existing galleries which do manifest such an interest are doing as much as anyone could expect, given that art-dealing, however idealistically motivated, is ultimately a business rather than a public service. Again the vicious circle: Hong Kong artists are clearly not going to be sold if they are not offered for sale and perceived to be sold, but at the same time there is a practical limit to how far this can be achieved unless dealers are ready to take what seems to them a disproportionate risk in presenting unknown artists unprofitably long enough for them to become known.

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How about, then, the public sector, through local government? Would something like a local equivalent of the old Arts Council of Great Britain make a difference? Actually, the question is rather: has it? Talking to a wide range of people one way and another involved with art in Hong Kong, I have found over and over again that the outsider notion that the handover in 1997 must have been a sort of watershed is dismissed. The real watershed, people have told me, was (or should have been) two years earlier, when the Hong Kong Arts Development Council was set up. This replaced the Council for the Performing Arts, an earlier body set up in 1981, and various other organizations concerned in a more scattered fashion with encouraging the arts, such as the Recreational and Culture Department of the Hong Kong government and the Hong Kong Arts Centre. Its very existence implies that some kind of official cultural policy was considered desirable, but there seems to have been very little agreement as to what that should be. The general opinion of the results, at least in the realm of the visual arts, appears to be that they created, or at least reinforced, a system which was radically over-weighted with administration. A lot of the available finance went to employ a disproportionate number of "curators", and too little one way or another to the artists or to provide space and opportunity for them to put pictures on walls. Well of course, artists would say that, wouldn't they? But there does seem to be a certain truth in their account of the situation. It was also suggested that these essentially bureaucratic curators were inclined to foster favouritism by selecting the artists to achieve a reasonable showing from their own friends and toadies. To that an outsider's answer would have to be: find me somewhere, London, Paris or New York, where that is not true. The only important difference is that in those centres of the arts there is at least a sufficient scope for alternative views and choices, whereas Hong Kong's specific problem is that it is a very small pond for one species of fish to be favoured over another. One thing which is clearly needed (though its mere existence would not remove the danger of favouritism or artistic bias) is more public space dedicated to local contemporary art. But this should not be felt to exclude the possibility, necessity even, of Hong Kong artists' doing something more to help themselves. There is certainly a remarkable lack of communication and collaboration among Hong Kong artists: the outsider would suppose, given the small size of what one might call, for want of a better term, the Hong Kong art community, that everyone would know everyone else, if not necessarily be bosom chums with the rest. In fact, any sense of community seems to be spectacularly lacking. There are a surprising number of art associations in Hong Kong, but they are mostly very small and quite amateur, if not amateurish. And for the most part they appear to be mutually exclusive, fostering division rather than unity. Naturally there are some exceptions to the rule. The Hong Kong Open Print Shop, for example, is a practical group of artists dedicated to the more experimental aspects of graphic

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art. It lives alongside the Hong Kong Graphics Society, a much older association (in existence now for more than 25 years) which includes amateurs along with professionals and stands in general for a much more traditional approach. But the coexistence seems to be quite happy, and there are members of the Open Printshop, like Fung Ho-yin, who also belong to the Graphics Society and experience no conflict in this. Then again, there are looser and more informal groupings, such as the variety of artistic enterprises which are gathered together in the converted premises still known as the Cattle Depot Artist Village. This provides studio and exhibition space to several separate artists, craftspeople and groups of photographers, performance artists and such. Here the sharing of accommodation is the most important thing. The location, a ninety-year-old depot for the temporary housing of cattle, consists of a compound containing a number of separate cattle sheds lending themselves to inexpensive conversion. Relations among the various occupants are apparently friendly, though there is little evidence of collective action. And the enterprise suffers from a certain sense of insecurity. As well it might, for like the numerous charity shops in Britain, it is dependent on the kindness and sympathy of the owners and authorities, which may well be genuine enough, but are still subject to commercial pressures. The enterprise was founded in a disused complex of buildings in Oil Street, only to be moved out when some alternative commercial use was found for that site, and tenure in the present Kowloon location is guaranteed for only three years. Another aspect of the vicious circle local arts find themselves trapped in is the fact that very few artists in Hong Kong can support themselves entirely on their income from making art. Nearly all of them do some teaching, and probably some purely commercial work in design, to support themselves. Though this is not necessarily a bad thing in itself, it does seem sometimes to stifle the purely artistic ambitions of the artists concerned: they do not need to fight as hard as they might for their place in the sun if they can support themselves (albeit modestly) by other means. There is also a slight problem in where and how they are going to teach. Astonishingly, Hong Kong has never had an art college or even a fine art department in some other, larger institution of advanced education. The nearest Hong Kong today comes to such a thing is the School of Design of the Polytechnic University, and that is, as its title proclaims, very strictly devoted to design, excluding fine art from its curriculum. This is no doubt indicative of the refusal of Hong Kong at large to see being an artist as a real job. Design at least sounds professional: designers will always be needed by industry and commerce, if only to put an artistic face on the essentially non-artistic. The trouble with this is that if fine art training and the study of fine art are not officially considered worth pursuing, then how can one seriously hope for any raising of consciousness in that regard? Admittedly, many artists and others that I spoke to suggest that at least (but possibly also at most) the international schools in Hong Kong do teach Art to A level or the equivalent, and often teach it well.

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This may help to alert students to its existence and cultural importance, which could then affect their ability to appreciate art in later life. But it does not help with the professional standing of art and artists, because hardly any local parents would consider the courses anything but decorative, something their children might study in the margins of what really matters, what might possibly lead towards a "proper" job. So what can artists themselves do about this? There certainly seem to be enough dedicated, if less than full-time, artists around in Hong Kong, and there is, to a Briton at any rate, an admirable refusal to make vital distinctions between what would in Britain be called "artists" and what would be called "craftsmen". Potters in particular seem to stand on more or less equal terms with painters and sculptors. (Presumably the high place always occupied by ceramics in the Chinese tradition has something to do with that.) But then, there are painters who think that this, to Brits, admirable equality of regard between the crafts and the arts has been achieved by downgrading the arts rather than by upgrading the crafts. What is finally needed is for Hong Kong artists in general to develop a proper sense of community. In many of my conversations I sense an expectation (if not perhaps a very hopeful expectation) that someone else - a government department, a major business sponsor - will step in to improve the situation. One thing I would feel pretty certain of from my long and varied experience in Europe is that this will not happen. The reason for this is that most governments are of their nature philistine, and assume that the public to whom they are ultimately answerable will see things likewise. No government I know of believes that art subsidy is any compelling vote winner, and in Britain no statistics demonstrating that more people in a year go to art galleries and museums than go to football matches will woo them from the idea that subsidising sports is a universally popular move and subsidising art is unpopular with everyone except a tiny minority. And notoriously large-scale subsidy for the arts from the private sector is (1) subject very much to the whims of the bosses - Fiat, for example, is so generous with art subsidies and art enterprises of its own because the head man is personally obsessed with art - and (2) subject to outside forces of the marketplace, so that if profits fall off, art subsidy is invariably the first thing to be sacrificed. Instead of trusting to either of these dubious allies, artists have to organize themselves. It is not an easy road to travel, because artists are traditionally individualistic, stereotypically (though not necessarily in fact) disorganized, and, especially in the precarious situation of any would-be fulltime artist in Hong Kong, unlikely to be sufficiently well off to invest very much money (as distinct from time and energy) in the setting-up, say, of an artist-directed exhibition space. Nevertheless, this is the only realistic way of improving the artist's lot. That and judicious self-promotion. But then, anyone brought up in Hong Kong during the last years of the colony should know all about that.

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